


Flutters

by writeitininkorinblood



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, in which Fjord realises he is not straight, with just a tiny bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-24 23:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13821906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeitininkorinblood/pseuds/writeitininkorinblood
Summary: Fjord is oblivious to his own feelings. Jester tries to help (and then Molly actually helps).





	Flutters

When Fjord heard the knock at the door he assumed it was Molly, checking he was decent before just walking in, so he called out for the person to come in without a second thought. It was only when he heard an awkward cough that he looked up and realised the figure standing in the doorway was less flamboyant tiefling and more subdued human.

Fjord’s heart had this terrible habit of cartwheeling every time he saw Caleb. It wasn’t something he could explain but mostly he put it down to the fact that he’d seen the wizard fall in a fight so many times that just seeing him conscious and standing was a relief. Because he didn’t feel the same around any of the others, and they were just as much his friends as Caleb now was.

“Hey, everything alright?” he asked, forcing himself to ignore the flutters in his chest.

There was something not quite right about the way Caleb was standing. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, wringing his hands with contagious anxiety. Just looking at him made Fjord nervous. Whatever Caleb had come to say, it didn’t seem like good news.

Caleb forced himself to nod. He almost wanted to run but he’d spent half an hour talking himself into doing this and he couldn’t walk away now. Fixing his gaze firmly on the floor so he didn’t have to make eye contact, he tried to remember how to speak.

“I know Molly found someone to spend the night with so I… Well, just if you wanted some company, I could… Maybe different from the kind of company Molly is. Or I hope different.”

It was roundabout and vague and by the look of confusion on Fjord’s face, it wasn’t enough to explain why he was there. When Molly had informed him downstairs of the offer he’d been made of, as he put it, more pleasurable lodgings for the evening, he’d given Caleb a wink and asked him to let Fjord know. He was currently running off that encouragement, but he could feel the effect slowly fading.  
“I’m not following,” Fjord prompted gently, when it became clear that Caleb wasn’t going to offer up any more information of his own accord.  
“We don’t get much privacy a lot of the time, I thought maybe we could… Make the most of it,” Caleb offered, scraping together just enough courage to look up.

He really wished he hadn’t.

Fjord’s eyes widened for a moment as he clearly connected the dots and worked out just what Caleb was offering. There was a flash of what Caleb wanted to believe was interest, but it was quickly dampened by sympathy. He wanted to run, but the horror at how much he had misunderstood what had being going on between them kept him rooted to the floor.

This was nothing Fjord had ever had to deal with before. He’d been flirting with Caleb, that much he had to admit. It had just come naturally half the time, but he’d never meant anything serious by it. Sometimes he did the same thing with Beau or Jester or even, on a few occasions, Molly. He liked flirting – so sue him. But with Caleb most. Had he been leading him on? Maybe. He’d had no idea that Caleb’s feelings ran deeper than a couple of playful comments.

“Gee, Caleb...” he began, climbing to his feet. “I’m sorry, I’m just not... Guys aren’t really my thing, y’know?”

“I am sorry. I will go,” Caleb mumbled, his face flushed and his hands shaking from the embarrassment he felt running though his veins.

“Wait, I didn’t-!” Fjord called, but Caleb was already out the room. Before he could move he heard the distinct sound of a door slamming and a lock clicking down the hallway. “Dammit,” he groaned, resting his head against the wall.

His feelings for Caleb were complicated. The wizard was easy to love, but that didn’t mean Fjord was _in_ love with him. It was just camaraderie, companionship, and a deep-seated desire to tuck Caleb’s hair behind his ear and kiss him as reverently as he could possibly manage. But the last one was stupid. Because he didn’t like men, never had. Why should one human guy be the exception?

It only took Fjord a couple of minutes to realise that this problem wasn’t going away without a drink. He spared a distressed look over to Caleb’s door as he headed for the stairs down to the barroom, pretty certain the last thing he’d want to see was the man who had just turned him down after months of accidentally leading him on. He felt awful.

Three shots of whiskey didn’t help. It was unlikely that a fourth was going to do the trick, but he ordered it anyway in the hope that it would at least let him forget his problems even if it didn’t fix them. He held up the glass to swirl the amber liquid around, but it just made him notice how much his hands were shaking so he downed it with a grimace.

The idea of Caleb being upset was making his stomach churn and he was so close to heading back upstairs to talk to him, to apologise and try to explain this weird state of wanting to kiss him but never having looked at a guy in that way before and why it was messing with his head. 

Before he had to make a decision on how to spend the rest of the evening, he was joined at the bar. He was half hoping it would be Caleb, but when he turned he was instead greeted by a familiar grinning tiefling, poking at his ribs.

“What are you up to?” she asked, with enthusiastic curiosity.

There was a moment where he considered talking to her just to have something to do, but it would involve revealing Caleb’s secrets too and that didn’t seem fair. So instead he shrugged.

“Nothing,” he lied, hoping that Jester would learn to leave something be for once.

Instead she gestured to the bar tender to bring her a mug of ale and turned back to Fjord with a raised eyebrow.

“That's what someone who was up to something would say,” she pointed out.

“It's also what someone who wasn't up to something would say.”

Fjord stared her down. With anyone else they would have known to back off, but this was Jester and she didn’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘back off’.

“But you _are_ up to something,” she sighed, pouting.

She had a list of tricks to get people to tell her things they’d rather keep to themselves, and this was only the beginning.

Fjord had experienced this before. He was painfully aware of just how persuasive Jester could be, and how long she could keep annoying him for. Her persistence far outlasted his patience. Still, he tried one more go at evasion.

“I'm just thinking,” he explained. Technically not a lie, just an understatement. Leaving out all the confusing details he would rather forget, at least for one evening.

Jester had had enough of playing fair. If Fjord wasn’t going to talk to her, _his best friend_ , then, well, she was just going to have to admit the connection she’d already made and possibly use it to her advantage, possibly.

“Are you thinking about why Caleb looks so miserable?” she asked, sly and watching Fjord closely for any reaction that betrayed something he wouldn’t tell her outright.

She didn’t have to watch all that hard. Fjord’s fingers tightened around the glass he’d been rolling around in his hands and he looked up sharply with pain in his eyes. He never wanted Caleb to be anything but happy, and the fact that he was the reason the man was upset was killing him.

“What?” he asked, hoping Jester was just messing with him. But she looked sincere, if a little smug that she’d been right about what was bothering him.

“I saw him on the way back to his room. He looked sad,” she shrugged. For a moment she had considered stopping him and asking what the matter was, but then they’d made eye contact and Caleb’s eyes very clearly read ‘leave me alone’, so she had. There was a time and a place for jokes and trickery, and that had not been it.

“What did he say to you?” Fjord asked, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

“Nothing. Why, what's there to say?” Jester pressed with a grin.

Fjord had reached the end of his rope when it came to sanity. He had to share what was bothering him with someone and Jester might not be ideal, especially if he didn’t want the entire tavern to know in a matter of minutes, but she was there and she was offering to listen. And it wasn’t like the group didn’t know Caleb was gay – he’d never kept it a secret. So Fjord was hoping it wasn’t too much of a breach of trust to share the content of their earlier conversation.

“He asked me to... Spend the night with him,” he explained, his voice low and his cheeks flushed. What exactly Caleb had had in mind was a mystery to him, but his mind could fill in the gaps and it painted some colourful pictures. As much as he’d been trying to suppress the idea with whiskey, uncomfortable with just how enticing it was, he couldn’t escape it entirely.

“And you said no...?” Jester asked, confused. But why else would Fjord be drinking alone in the bar instead of being upstairs with Caleb.

“Of course,” Fjord said, just as perplexed as Jester. Why wouldn’t he say no?

“ _Why?_ ” Jester was exasperated. She’d seen how Fjord would flirt with Caleb, leaning closer than was necessary and reserving a special smile just for him as he offered teasing comments. Anyone could tell that he had feelings for the wizard. Except, apparently, Fjord himself. 

“Because I'm not... I'm interested in women,” Fjord explained, a little defensive.

Blinking at him, Jester waited for the punchline. When it became obvious that Fjord was deadly serious, she had to shake her head. This was a man who travelled with her and Molly, and he still didn’t know that you could be attracted to more than one gender? Clearly they were going to have to work through this one step at a time so he could follow the logic, because it was ridiculous for Fjord to be moping at the bar and Caleb to be moping in his room when they both would be infinitely happier if they were together and making out.

“Are you interested in Caleb?” she asked, trying to sound more patient than she really felt.

Fjord had been avoiding directly asking himself this question for a long time. Because there wasn’t a way to categorise what he felt for Caleb without using romantic terms, but it was such a big leap to make. Still, he knew that wanting to kiss someone and run your fingers through their hair and slowly undo the fastenings on their clothing so you could get to skin beneath, teasing them with gentle touches all the while, weren’t platonic desires.

“A little,” he admitted, quiet and tempted to order his fifth shot. Interested in wasn’t quite enough, though. It was more like _entranced by_ , or _drawn to_ , or _desperate to touch_.

With a smirk, Jester folded her arms. “Caleb's not a woman.”

_Hence the problem_ , Fjord thought bitterly. If Caleb were a woman then they’d already have kissed, probably months ago. But he didn’t actually _want_ Caleb to be a woman. He liked him just as he was, it just made the whole feelings thing more difficult.

“No, he's not,” he agreed, through gritted teeth.

Jester didn’t see the problem.

“So he's an exception,” she shrugged. “Or you're more interested in men than you think you are. Both are fine.”

She said it so simply that Fjord couldn’t help but stare at her. It wasn’t anywhere near as easy as she made it sound, not when there was such a mental block in his brain. Wanting to touch Caleb and actually touching Caleb were two very different things, worlds apart. His feelings were probably only there because of how close they all got while travelling, sharing each other’s space and lives. He didn’t _actually_ want Caleb... Only he did. He really did.

Jester was blissfully unaware of his internal struggle.

“Go. Find him,” she urged, gesturing madly towards the stairs. It seemed stupid for both men to keep being sad when there was such an easy solution.

Fjord looked towards the stairs, considering it even if only for a brief moment. But all he could see was Caleb’s face when he’d turned him down, and he had a feeling any offer of a warm bed to spend the night in was off the table.

“He'd be mad at me,” he sighed, shaking his head. He’d had one chance and he’d blown it because he didn’t know how to make sense of the new feelings. Another shot of whiskey was starting to sound more and more appealing, maybe chased with a flagon of ale.

Scrunching her nose up, Jester considered what the right way to convince him of her point of view was. She could march him upstairs and knock on Caleb’s door herself so she could just push Fjord at him, but that didn’t seem like the most romantic way to start a relationship. Besides, Fjord was still acting stupid about the being attracted to a man thing. She needed back up. Craning her neck to look around the tavern, she looked for another of their friends who could back her up on convincing Fjord that Caleb liked him too much to be angry at him for being a little confused. When her eyes fell on a lavender tiefling across the from, she grinned. Two bisexuals were better than one.

“Molly!” she shouted, waving him over.

“Hey!” Fjord protested. This was his business and no one else’s. Okay, maybe it was a little Caleb’s business, and evidently Jester now thought it was hers. But it definitely wasn’t Molly’s.

Following Jester’s line of sight, Fjord watched as Molly apologised to the attractive guardsman he was talking to, quite possibly the date for the night Caleb had alluded to, and swanned over with a look of curious amusement on his lips. Jester tended to bring that specific expression out of him a lot.  
“You called?” he asked, with one eyebrow raised. As fond as he was of his friends, he would much rather be talking to his new companion.

Jester didn’t waste her time.  
“Tell Fjord it’s okay that he wants to sleep with Caleb,” she ordered, matter of fact and without lowering her voice.

Fjord felt his cheeks heat up.   
“JESTER!” he growled.

He didn’t want to sleep with Caleb, or at least he could convince himself he didn’t if he kept repeating it. With two of his friends now looking at him like he was some kind of museum exhibit, what he really wanted was to disappear into the ground and never have to face them again.   
“Come again?” Molly blinked, thrown by Jester’s bluntness. It was, as always, difficult to tell if she was joking or not.

“He’s having a crisis of sexuality,” Jester repeated with a sigh. She could never understand why people couldn’t just fall in love with people and not gender.

Molly took one look at Fjord and could immediately see how much the half orc wanted the ground to swallow him up. Jester didn’t seem to care about how public this entire conversation was, as usual, but he was a little more sensitive to what was probably going through Fjord’s head right at that moment and so he grabbed his arm and pulled him away from Jester and out through the front door and into the street.

Leaning against the wall of the tavern and taking some deep breaths, Fjord looked happy to be away from everything inside. He managed a grateful nod as he tried to suppress the alcohol in his system – he hadn’t had enough to feel drunk, but was definitely bordering on tipsy.

“What’s up?” Molly asked, wanting to hear Fjord’s side of the story.

Shrugging, Fjord looked at his feet. He didn’t want to go through this again.  
“Nothing, Jester is just being… Jester,” he tried, hoping that would be enough.  
“But, you and Caleb…?” Molly trailed off, unsure exactly what to ask. He was really hoping Fjord would get his shit together, because the mutual pining was driving him slowly crazy. When he’d suggested Caleb make a move earlier, it had been out of impatience. If he had to hear the wizard mope about how good Fjord was with Nott or how rough his hands were or how much he underestimated his own power, Molly was going to kill them both.  
“There’s nothing to tell,” Fjord argued, guarded.

That Molly could believe. He has a feeling that once the two men finally got their act together, there would be no separating them for quite some time. They had a lot to make up for.  
“Do you want there to be something to tell?” he pushed, as gently as possible.

Molly was easier to talk to than Jester when it came to this. Where Jester told him how he felt, and she wasn’t necessarily _wrong_ but he wasn’t going to admit that, Molly was asking. The questions felt less leading and more genuine – he could say no and walk away and that would be fine. But he didn’t want to say no, and the only place he really wanted to walk was right up to Caleb’s door.   
“I don’t know. I’ve never considered… guys. Not like that,” he sighed. Caleb just had to be an exception. All magic and sad eyes and affection.

Molly just shrugged. He’d never really had to question his sexuality before, but he was more sympathetic than it seemed Jester had been.   
“You don’t have to put a label on it, you know? If you like Caleb then that can be all there is to it if you want,” he explained, wanting to help. This didn’t have to be difficult.

Fjord wrestled with the idea for a moment. He’d been caught up in the idea of having to figure out what was going on with him before anything else, but Molly might have a point. There wasn’t a specific order he had to do this in, and if he was going to do it in order of preference then Caleb was first.  
“He… I want to… I would very much like to spend the night with him,” Fjord said, trying to sound confident. And, oh, the previously unexplained butterflies circling his heart whenever Caleb was near suddenly made a lot more sense. Admitting he had feelings helped a lot.

“Then go tell him that,” Molly encouraged. “As someone with eyes, I can assure you he’d be happy to take you up on the offer.”  
“He’s already offered it,” Fjord shrugged.

Molly was glad Caleb had run with his idea, but he couldn’t help but despair at how useless these two were at getting together.  
“Then why are you still here?! Off you go.” He tried to herd Fjord back inside the tavern, but the warlock put out his hand to stop him.  
“Molly-” he tried to protest.

Cutting Fjord off, Molly just put his hands on his hips and raised an eyebrow.

“Forget the fact he’s a guy. Do you like him?”  
“Very much,” Fjord sighed. The longer he spent not with Caleb, the more he would give anything to be upstairs with him. He was just terrified Caleb wouldn’t think too kindly of him after their earlier conversation.   
“And do you have any strong aversions to the thought of being intimate with him, even though he’s a man?”

Fjord swallowed. This was the first time he’d ever really thought about it and while he was worried he’d have no idea what he was doing, he wasn’t at all against the chance to learn.  
“The opposite,” he said, trying to sound casual and pretend his face wasn’t flushed.

“Then get your arse upstairs and have fun,” Molly ordered.

Fjord didn’t have to be told twice, not anymore. He ducked back into the tavern, resolutely not making eye contact with Jester, and headed determinedly up the stairs. Caleb might turn around and say he had missed his chance, but he would never know until he tried his luck. And either way, he wanted to apologise.

He lingered outside Caleb’s room for longer than he would ever admit. It took several deep breaths and a lot of courage-collecting before he finally reached up and let his knuckles make contact with the wood.

There was a sigh from inside that Fjord knew was Caleb pulling himself away from a book, followed by the sound of footsteps. Fighting to the urge to bolt, Fjord instead gave in to the desire to quickly fix his hair. He wanted Caleb to think he looked nice and he cursed himself for not going to wash up before this.

When the door swung open, Fjord was greeted by an exhausted and miserable looking Caleb, and all he wanted to do was make him smile. He knew he was part of the reason that his evening wasn’t going all that well and he felt awful for it, but he knew he couldn’t just reach out and kiss everything better. He had to do this right.

He should have known that Caleb wouldn’t be happy to see him. The wizard looked like he wanted to shut the door in his face, but Fjord forced what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“I’m sorry about before,” he tried.

Caleb flinched and shrunk in on himself, making his frame seem even smaller. He didn’t want the reminder.   
“It is fine. You do not have to return my- I am fine. I would just like to be alone,” he mumbled.  
“No, you don’t get it,” Fjord groaned. He was just going to have to go for this.

Stepping closer, he put his hands on Caleb’s waist. His movements were slow, giving Caleb ample time to pull away should he want to, but he needed the contact and he was hoping Caleb still wanted it too. And he seemed to be in luck, because the he relaxed just a little against Fjord’s touch, shifting a tiny bit closer.

There was no way Caleb could misinterpret the gesture. Fjord’s hands were warm and large enough to make him feel safe without triggering his anxiety that came with feeling trapped. It was a feeling he really didn’t want to end, but they were in the corridor and he didn’t understand what had changed Fjord’s mind, or even if his mind had been changed.

“I thought you did not like men,” Caleb challenged, forcing himself to keep eye contact.

He was pretty sure he had a right to be put out with the sudden change of pace. After spending half an hour alternating between staring at the ceiling and trying to distract himself with books, he’d given up on reading and started to consider how he was going to face Fjord at breakfast. Except now here the warlock was, holding his waist and looking at him with… love? in his eyes.

“Turns out I’m a liar,” Fjord breathed, quiet and finally honest. “Because I think I might like you.”

Caleb considered him for a long moment, trying to search out any hint of lies or trickery in his eyes. Because he wanted this, but not if it wasn’t for the right reasons. When he found only affection and nerves, he stepped back, tugging Fjord further into the room with him and reaching around him to shut the door. They weren’t doing anything in the hallway, especially not when they were in the same building as Jester, who seemed perpetually drawn to things that she wasn’t meant to see.

The movement of closing the door had left Caleb pressed closer against Fjord’s chest, and he made no attempt to move away. Fjord took the chance that this was going to end well and moved one of his hands to Caleb’s cheek, tilting his face up just a little so he didn’t have to lean down quite so much when he _finally_ pulled the wizard in for a kiss, keeping it gentle and brief but unable to completely erase the desperation he felt. The butterflies in his stomach swarmed; this was what they’d been wanting all along.

Caleb kissed back, one hand on Fjord’s shoulder, tugging at his shirt, and another in his hair. He felt himself get dizzy from the contact, endorphins racing through his brain as his thoughts were scrambled. It seemed natural to press Fjord back against the door and step forward against him so their bodies were lined up and he could lean his weight into Fjord without worrying about toppling them both over. It was closer than he’d been to anyone for a long time and he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed the feeling of security when it was someone he trusted.

“And?” he asked, as they pulled away from each other just a little. He didn’t want to stop but he had to know where he stood.  
“Hmm?” was about all Fjord could manage, his wits as lost to the wind as Caleb’s.   
“ _Do_ you like men? Like me?”

Fjord chuckled at the question – he didn’t pay nighttime visits like this to many people he didn’t like. So he kissed Caleb again, quickly but deeply enough to send both their pulses racing again, and to draw a soft keening noise from the wizard as he drew away.

“Does that answer your question?” Fjord said, his voice low and suggestive as he traced his thumb in circles on Caleb’s cheekbone.

Caleb wanted to say yes and forget about talking for a while, but he had to be sure. He wasn’t about to dive into this, no matter how much he wanted it, without knowing Fjord was in the same place. He’d had a taste of that pain earlier and it wasn’t something he was keen to repeat.  
“No. In words, please,” he requested, his Zemnian accent thicker than it had been in a while. He was counting himself lucky that he could remember how to speak at all.  
“Yes,” Fjord confirmed gently, seeing how important it was that he did. “I like you a great deal, darlin’, oddball nerd that you are.”

Before Caleb could express any indignation at the exact wording of the sentiment, Fjord was kissing him again. And he had lost all the willpower to do anything but kiss back, letting his hands untuck Fjord’s shirt and roam up underneath the fabric. His night had definitely turned around.

Fjord was quickly finding that kissing guys, or at least kissing Caleb, felt just as natural as kissing women. When Caleb realised Nott was going to come upstairs and probably walk in on them pretty soon, he dragged them both down the corridor to Fjord’s room and locked the door behind them, reassuming exactly where they left off. And Fjord learnt, as Caleb pushed him down onto the mattress with a shy smile, that everything else was going to feel just as natural too.


End file.
